Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘Of course not. We want to take him out before the conference even starts. We know he’ll be staying in the Hotel Grand in Amman for two days before the conference begins, prepping for the talks.’

‘What about the peace deal?’ Danny said. ‘You take him out before it happens, the Turks are going to carry on butchering the Kurds.’

‘It’s a good job,’ said Sturrock, ‘that men like you are set to fighting rather than thinking. The man’s a Russian agent, for heaven’s sake. Isn’t it obvious that he’ll simply do what he can to destabilise the peace talks? The Russians are quite happy for the Kurds to be wiped out. There’ll be no peace agreement while O’Brien’s involved.’

‘He’s right,’ said Attwood. ‘We can kill two birds with one stone here.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Actually, perhaps we can kill three.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Danny.

‘O’Brien will be well guarded in the hotel, but he has a weak spot. It’s about six inches long and hangs between his legs. It’s a common enough flaw in these people.’

‘We all remember Petraeus,’ Sturrock muttered.

‘O’Brien’s cut from the same cloth. Can’t keep his dick in his pants. He’s got a reputation for picking up girls in hotel bars when he’s abroad, even on work tours. Everyone hushes it up because he’s so respected. Of course, it’s going to be hard for you to get close to him because you don’t have blonde hair and big tits. But if you hook up with somebody who does, all of a sudden we have a strategy.’

‘Except you need a blonde with big tits who you can trust to kill him.’

Another silence. Another long glance between the three men.

‘We believe we have someone who fits the bill,’ said Sturrock. Danny had never heard him sound more weaselly. Sturrock moisturised his hands again. There was an unpleasant slippery sound as he did it. ‘Show him,’ he said.

The CO handed a sheaf of photographs over the table. They were scene-of-crime pictures and they were grotesque. One showed a corpse bound to a pole with a cable tie round his neck, his ears missing, blood streaking down the sides of his face. Another showed a dead man on a bed in the position of a crucifix, fingers removed and lying on his chest, blood blooming into the bedclothes from his butchered hands. A third picture – the worst – showed a male body with a cut throat and the genitals removed.

Danny had seen these pictures before. He put them down on the table. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ he said.

He knew that these killings were the handiwork of the former MI6 agent Bethany White. The victims were ex-SAS, and Bethany had taken them out in a bloody spree of anger and revenge. She would have killed Danny if she’d had the chance. It was only because her kid had begged her not to that Danny was still alive. ‘You’re insane. She’ll never do it. She’s got you over a fucking barrel.’

This was true. Bethany White had hard documentary evidence of British war crimes. Copies were secretly stashed with various lawyers around the world. She’d made it very clear that if anything ever happened to her or her son, the lawyers would release the evidence to the world.

‘It may be true,’ Sturrock said, a hint of self-satisfaction in his voice, ‘that at one time Bethany White had some leverage. That time has passed. She made it particularly hard to track down the lawyers she’d engaged, but we managed it. The guardians of her precious so-called evidence have been dealt with.’

The phrase ‘dealt with’ had a note of finality about it. Danny didn’t probe any further. ‘There’s still no reason why she should do what you ask her,’ he said. ‘She fucking hates you. She hates all of us. Plus, she’s a psycho.’

‘I can’t disagree with you there,’ Sturrock said. ‘But you’re quite wrong in other respects. Bethany White will do as she’s told. We’ve arranged some leverage of our own.’

‘Yesterday afternoon,’ Attwood said, ‘an SBS team abducted her son. I believe he’s also called Danny?’

‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘He is.’ And though he would never have admitted, nor even let it show in his face, he felt a moment of queasiness. No matter what Bethany White’s faults – and they were many – her boy was a good kid. Dragging him into the mess? Danny didn’t like it.

‘The boy’s being held in a secure location,’ Sturrock continued. ‘He’s safe, he’s well looked after. Rather better looked after than he was with his mother, I should think.’

‘Does Bethany know?’

He nodded grimly. ‘Her reaction was extreme.’

‘I bet it was,’ Danny muttered. There was an awkward silence, then Danny shook his head. ‘This doesn’t add up,’ he said. ‘There are other ways to deal with O’Brien. Why does it have to be Bethany White?’

Sturrock looked at the two military men. It looked like he didn’t want to articulate whatever was coming next. It was Attwood who took over. ‘Let’s be plain,’ he said. ‘We’re green-lighting a British op to take out an American five-star general. The fallout is potentially catastrophic. It’s all very well doing the Yanks a favour, but who’s to say they won’t use our complicity against us at some time in the future? If that happens, it either compromises the assassin, or it gives them a great deal of leverage over us. It’s much better if, once the job is complete, the assassin is taken out of the picture.’

And suddenly, it all became clear to Danny. ‘You want me to kill Bethany White when she’s done it. You want to use her because she’s ruthless and expendable.’

‘More than expendable,’ Sturrock said. ‘She’s a rogue MI6 agent and she has intel that cannot enter the public domain.’ He pressed his fingers together once more. ‘Like I said, three birds with one stone.’

Again, silence. It was Danny who broke it. ‘What about the kid?’ he said.

‘He will be well looked after,’ Sturrock said. ‘We have the budget for it. He’ll be re-homed in a more stable environment. To be perfectly honest with you, the outcome will be much better for him. Once he’s got over the initial distress of losing his mother, of course.’

‘You reckon?’ He couldn’t help thinking of his own daughter Rose. The daughter he seldom saw. Was his absence the best outcome for her too?

The three men were staring at him. There was no sense that they were waiting for his agreement. Danny had been a soldier for long enough to understand that was not how it worked. They were waiting for an acknowledgement that he understood his orders. ‘Just to be clear: you want me to babysit Bethany White on a mission to assassinate General O’Brien. When it’s done, you want me to kill her.’

‘It’s more than babysitting,’ Attwood said. ‘Of course you need to make sure that she does what she’s told. But getting her into Jordan isn’t straightforward.’

‘For obvious reasons,’ Sturrock said, ‘we’ve wanted to keep tabs on her movements. She’ll be pinged at any border with facial recognition technology. It means we don’t want her making a standard border entry into Jordan. You’ll have to get her in covertly.’

‘We’re proposing a tandem HALO,’ said the CO. ‘We’ll get you into the Jordanian desert and you can make your way cross country into Amman. Once you’re there, we’ll have counterfeit IDs and press passes waiting. We’ll arrange for you to be on the press list for access to the hotel where O’Brien is staying. Our intelligence suggests that his routine is to go to the hotel bar every evening at 18.00 hours sharp for a cocktail. That’s where you’ll need to make contact. Get the job done and get her out of there and out of Amman.’